French EPO Report No Shock To Lance Armstrong

LONDON, July 25, 2013 (AFP) – Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong said
Thursday he was “not surprised” that 18 leading riders in the 1998 Tour de
France have been named by the French Senate as having taken the blood-boosting
agent EPO.

The American said “virtually all of us” broke doping rules after the French
Senate released a report saying 18 riders, including the top two finishers in
the 1998 Tour, Italy’s Marco Pantani and Germany’s Jan Ullrich, had tested
positive for EPO.

An additional 13 riders were named as having suspicious samples.

Armstrong told www.cyclingnews.com: “My initial reaction is that I am not
surprised. As I have said, it was an unfortunate era for all of us and
virtually all of us broke the rules, and lied about it.”

The results also revealed Armstrong tested positive for EPO in 1999.

Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour titles for doping offenses
but no action has been taken against the late Pantani and Ullrich, who have
retained their podium positions from 1998.

The German, however, was found guilty of doping by the Court of Arbitration
for Sport in 2012 and stripped of his results from 2005 until his retirement
in 2007.

Although he claimed when retiring that he had “never once cheated as a
cyclist” he finally owned up a month ago to his indiscretions.

“I will leave this up to other people and the passage of time to determine
if the punishments doled out, or not, meet the crimes on any individual
basis,” added Armstrong, who repeated his call for a truth and reconciliation
commission to deal with the whole issue of doping in cycling.

He added: “If we don’t come together, have the conversation and draw a line
in the sand and then move on, we’re all screwed.”

The confession comes just three days after the 39-year-old Olympic gold
medalist and 17-time Tour rider announced his retirement from the sport.

“Leading into the Tour I made a decision, I sourced it (EPO) myself, there
was no one else involved, it didn’t involve the team in any way,” O’Grady told
News Limited newspapers.

“I just had to drive over the border and buy it at any pharmacy.

“The hardest part of all this is I did it for two weeks before the Tour de
France. I used extremely cautious amounts because I’d heard a lot of horror
stories and did the absolute minimum of what I hoped would get me through.”

O’Grady, a former track cyclist who won medals at three Olympics, including
gold in the Madison at the 2004 Athens Games, took the first of his four
career Tour stage wins that year in a race overshadowed by the Festina doping
scandal.

“When the Festina affair happened, I smashed it, got rid of it and that was
the last I ever touched it,” O’Grady said.

“That’s the hardest thing to swallow out of all this — it was such a long
time ago and one very bad judgement is going to taint a lot of things and
people will have a lot of questions.

“You win Olympics, Paris-Roubaix and now all of that is going to be tainted
by this action and I wish it could be changed but it can’t.”

The Australian Olympic Committee reacted swiftly to the report, calling for
his immediate resignation from its Athletes’ Commission.

“Members of our London Olympic Team who elected Stuart to the Athletes’
Commission are entitled to be angry knowing they had supported an athlete who
had cheated,” AOC president John Coates said in a statement.